white woman, whose loveliness and awesome power seemed to visibly shine
about her like a halo, or rather like the glow from some unseen light.
Never have I seen her veiled shape look more terrible than it did in
that space, while she gathered herself up for vengeance.

At last it came.

"Dogs and serpents," _She_ began in a low voice that gradually gathered
power as she went on, till the place rang with it. "Eaters of human
flesh, two things have ye done. First, ye have attacked these strangers,
being white men, and would have slain their servant, and for that alone
death is your reward. But that is not all. Ye have dared to disobey me.
Did I not send my word unto you by Billali, my servant, and the father
of your household? Did I not bid you to hospitably entertain these
strangers, whom now ye have striven to slay, and whom, had not they
been brave and strong beyond the strength of men, ye would cruelly have
murdered? Hath it not been taught to you from childhood that the law of
_She_ is an ever fixed law, and that he who breaketh it by so much as
one jot or tittle shall perish? And is not my lightest word a law?
Have not your fathers taught you this, I say, whilst as yet ye were but
children? Do ye not know that as well might ye bid these great caves to
fall upon you, or the sun to cease its journeying, as to hope to turn
me from my courses, or make my word light or heavy, according to your
minds? Well do ye know it, ye Wicked Ones. But ye are all evil--evil
to the core--the wickedness bubbles up in you like a fountain in the
spring-time. Were it not for me, generations since had ye ceased to be,
for of your own evil way had ye destroyed each other. And now, because
ye have done this thing, because ye have striven to put these men, my
guests, to death, and yet more because ye have dared to disobey my word,
this is the doom that I doom you to. That ye be taken to the cave of